Deriving Coding-Specific Sub-Models from LLMs using Resource-Efficient PruningShow others and affiliations
2025 (English)In: Proceedings of IEEE/ACM International Workshop on Large Language Models for Code 2025, LLM4Code 2025, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), 2025Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated their exceptional performance in various complex code generation tasks. However, their broader adoption is limited by significant computational demands and high resource requirements, particularly memory and processing power. To mitigate such requirements, model pruning techniques are used to create more compact models with significantly fewer parameters. However, current approaches do not focus on the efficient extraction of programming-language-specific sub-models. In this work, we explore the idea of efficiently deriving coding-specific sub-models through unstructured pruning (i.e., Wanda). We investigate the impact of different domain-specific calibration datasets on pruning outcomes across three distinct domains and extend our analysis to extracting four language-specific sub-models: Python, Java, C++, and JavaScript. We demonstrate that it is possible to efficiently extract programming-language-specific sub-models using appropriate calibration datasets while maintaining acceptable accuracy w.r.t. full models. We are also the first to provide analytical evidence that domain-specific tasks activate distinct regions within LLMs, supporting the creation of specialized sub-models through unstructured pruning. We believe that this work has significant potential to enhance LLM accessibility for coding by reducing computational requirements to enable local execution on consumer-grade hardware, and supporting faster inference times critical for real-time development feedback.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), 2025.
Keywords [en]
Large Language Models, LLMs, pruning, code
National Category
Computer Systems Computer Sciences Computer Vision and Learning Systems
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-374905DOI: 10.1109/LLM4Code66737.2025.00028ISI: 001554529600024Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-105009110881OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kth-374905DiVA, id: diva2:2025739
Conference
2025 IEEE/ACM International Workshop on Large Language Models for Code, LLM4Code 2025, Ottawa, ON, Canada, May 3, 2025
Projects
Digital Futures
Funder
Knut and Alice Wallenberg FoundationVinnova, 2023-03003Swedish Research Council, 2021-0421
Note
Part of ISBN 979-8-3315-2615-3
QC 20260108
2026-01-072026-01-072026-01-08Bibliographically approved